Science Fiction for Old Farts

Son of Heinlein, Whatever

As I’ve previously mentioned, Robert Heinlein is one of my faves. Judging by my blog stats, he’s definitely a draw (my post on RAH has drawn by far the most attention).

A couple of years ago I started hearing about this guy John Scalzi. He was being touted as the new Heinlein. Like I hadn’t heard and been disappointed by that one before. (Seems that any reasonable excuse to stick Heinlein’s name on a book cover is seized upon by the publishers these days.)

I searched for and found Scalzi’s Whatever blog, read a few blurbs for his breakthrough novel Old Man’s War and decided to give him a try. I was not disappointed.

I’ve remained not-disappointed as I’ve continued to read and enjoy John’s stories. His blog is on my list of ‘web things to visit every day’ (right after the two hours spent on email). Its one of the more popular and well-trafficked sites on the internet these days and covers such a wide range of topics that it defies all categorization.

I’ve also found John to be very approachable and generous with his time. He doesn’t just post, he responds to the commentary regularly (the comments on his blog are well worth the time), he regularly participates in his forum AND he answers emails. The guy understands self-promotion and gets the fundamental concept that without fans, he’d probably be sitting in a coffee shop pretending to write the next great American novel.

So now I’m kicking myself in the head because a couple of days ago Scalzi announced that he had been asked to write the intro to a new Heinlein book Project Moonbase and Others. Which would have given me the perfect opportunity to write about both Heinlein and Scalzi at the same time, on a day when I failed to post anything. (I won’t stoop so low as to write something inane just to up the traffic, but I’m also not above using popular topics and else’s huge numbers to boost my own when its reasonably justifiable. If I were stooping, the entry might look something like this: Robert Heinlein Whatever John Scalzi Robert Heinlein Whatever John Scalzi Robert Heinlein Whatever John Scalzi Robert Heinlein Whatever John Scalzi… which is not really what I’m after here.)

So Subterranean Press has published this collection of television scripts by RAH for a show that never materialized (some of it was used for a movie entitled Project Moonbase) and Scalzi finally gets to have his name appear along with RAH’s in/on the same book. And I get to reference one of the most popular blogs alongside one of the most popular tags.

Scalzi’s entire intro, along with one of Heinlein’s scripts based on Delilah and the Spacerigger are available. Now I’ve got to go and scrounge up fifty bucks so I can continue to truthfully state that my Heinlein collection is complete. Bob Eggleton’s cover is just too much to pass up.